Hey buddy… don’t force your beliefs on me.
“We talk about gun laws. We talk about gun control. Every time something like this happens, they talk about it and nothing gets done. I’m not trying to say that that’s to blame for what happened, but if Chris had not been able to get hold of 13 guns, this wouldn’t have happened,” the father said.
Mercer said he has never held a gun. He doesn’t want to, he said. He laid out his personal philosophy on the issue: “I’m a great believer (in) you don’t buy guns, don’t buy guns, you don’t buy guns.”
Notice how he’s quick to blame guns but is appropriately reticent about blaming his son’s mental state until the investigation is complete.
Pressed on whether his son’s mental state could be to blame for the violence, Mercer declined to comment, saying he wanted to let police follow through, but he left open the possibility that his son’s state of mind could have been played a role.
Perhaps as he goes about assigning blame he should look to his evil son.
As a parent, it is hard to be critical of other parents, knowing the challenges of raising children and with no guarantee of how they will turn out.
That said, both of Mercer’s parents need to do some serious reflection on their life choices and how they may have impacted their son. Wondering how active this father was in the life of his son.
And from the standpoint of the mother, you have a son who lives with you that is taking drugs for mental illness, but yet allow him to keep purchasing more and more guns.
Hillary’s “Village” can’t match the ability of a committed mother and father in raising a child through young adulthood.
I think he can be forgiven for his inarticulate criticism of American gun culture. He’s probably not used to making public statements and he’s just lost his son in an unspeakably horrific way.
Still, I find it interesting that the only time we ever discuss mental health (discuss, not do anything about) is when it is used as a deflection away from talking about guns. Other countries don’t have less mental illness than we do. Why do they have so much fewer gun-related deaths?
Is it better health care? If so, I’m all for emulating some of those other countries.
But it seems obvious that we have the number of gun deaths we have primarily because of how easy it is to get guns and how many of them there are in private hands. Sure, it may also have to do with racial injustice, poverty levels and other social issues. But you can’t seriously think that if we had the level of gun ownership in, say the United Kingdom, we would have the same level of gun violence we have today.
I totally get that what other countries do isn’t politically–or perhaps even Constitutionally–feasible here. But the idea that we can–no, MUST–do absolutely nothing? It’s unconscionable. One must be licensed to use an motor vehicle. One has to register it at every sale. Even though guns are Constitutionally protected and cars are not, I don’t think this is unreasonable.
Here’s a thought. Even if we eliminated crime-related and mental illness-related homicides in the entire country we’d still have leaps and bounds more deaths than other civilized democracies. Why? All those guns laying around lead to another kind of death: suicide. Gun suicides alone put us far above any of those other countries.
>All those guns laying around lead to another kind of death: suicide.
Your don’t get it.
I get that more than half of gun deaths in America are suicides. And I get that if private gun ownership were a lot lower we’d have a lot fewer suicides. Do you get it?
It’s so bad that even if we eliminated crime-related gun homicides and all the psycho killer mass shootings, we’d STILL have more gun deaths than just about any other civilized nation on earth.
>And I get that if private gun ownership were a lot lower we’d have a lot fewer suicides.
You don’t get it. I can’t believe just how far removed from “getting it” you are.
Educate me, Jason. I’m open to learning something. I don’t have all the answers. Am I wrong about the numbers of gun suicides being higher than the number of gun deaths overall in other countries? Am I wrong about gun suicides outnumbering crime and mass shooting gun deaths? Maybe I’m missing some larger point that you’d like to supply us with. Hit me. Don’t just say “you don’t get it.”